Putin in front of military:

Continue testing “Oreshnik” in “combat situations”

(Bild: Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

According to President Vladimir Putin, Russia will carry out further tests of the new "Oreshnik" missile, which was fired at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Tuesday, in "combat situations". He also announced the start of series production of the medium-range missile.

"We will continue these tests, including in combat situations, depending on the situation and the nature of the threats to Russia's security," Putin said in a televised meeting with military representatives on Friday.

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is convening a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council following the deployment of the new Russian medium-range missile. According to a spokesperson, the meeting on Tuesday in Brussels will deal with the latest Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro (video above). The Kremlin speaks of a message to the West in this regard.

"We will continue these tests, even in combat situations," Putin told military representatives on Friday.

(Bild: Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Flies at several times the speed of sound
According to independently unconfirmed Russian information, it can fly at hypersonic speed and cannot be intercepted. Experts assume that it could theoretically also be equipped with nuclear explosive devices. Six individual warheads are said to have hit Dnipro on Thursday. They were not of a nuclear nature, Putin said.

According to the alliance, the consultations in Brussels are being organized at the request of the government in Kiev and are taking place at ambassador level. The NATO-Ukraine Council met for the first time at the NATO summit in Lithuania in 2023 at the level of heads of state and government. The relatively new body was created for exchanges in crisis situations.

Kremlin: deployment was a message to the West
Meanwhile, Moscow described the deployment of the new hypersonic medium-range missile against Ukraine as a message to the West. Russia will react to reckless actions by Ukraine's Western supporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

The main message was that the reckless decisions and actions of Western countries, which allowed Ukraine to attack Russian territory with missiles supplied by them, "cannot remain without a reaction from the Russian side", Peskov said.

"The Russian side has clearly demonstrated its capabilities and the contours of further retaliatory measures in the event that our concerns are not taken into account have been outlined quite clearly," the spokesman continued.

USA was informed 30 minutes before launch
Russia had not been obliged to warn the USA of the attack, but had informed them 30 minutes before the launch. President Putin is still open to dialog. But the outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden "prefers to continue on the path of escalation".

One day after the Russian attack with the new hypersonic medium-range missile, Ukraine presented findings about the projectile. The missile had reached more than eleven times the speed of sound, according to the Ukrainian secret service. It had flown for 15 minutes from launch in the southern Russian region of Astrakhan to impact in the city of Dnipro.

Missile was traveling at over eleven Mach
The missile was equipped with six warheads, each of which was fitted with six pieces of submunition. "The speed in the last section of the trajectory was over Mach 11," according to the secret service. One Mach corresponds to around 1225 kilometers per hour.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi had already demanded a decisive response from the international community to the Russian attack on Thursday. "This is a clear and serious expansion of the scale and brutality of this war, a cynical violation of the UN Charter by Russia," Selensky wrote on social networks.

UN: "Worrying development"
 The United Nations spoke of a "worrying development". "All this is going in the wrong direction. What we want to see is all parties taking urgent steps to de-escalate the situation," said UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric in New York.